


Persistence of Vision

by blurhawaii



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 20:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4193028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blurhawaii/pseuds/blurhawaii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In his line of work, possessions fell in and out of his hands daily. Books were rare and books on magic far and few between, but stories, stories were tangled words that didn’t need to be written in ink. He had heard spoken tales of other worlds over bridges and under archways, subtly different in appearance until suddenly you found you were in too deep. With a dash of ego, he had always assumed he would know the difference but the moment John Childermass crossed the threshold of The White Horse the dull itch under his skin became a bone deep vibration, and the ethereal thing he was searching for moved tangibly closer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persistence of Vision

-

The seaside town of Whitby, in the autumn months of 1789, was a veritable hive of business and moneymaking. John Childermass’ worn boot heels fell upon its streets as part of a natural progression of following where the pockets were deepest and the attention most diverted. Here, he found himself well situated.

Whitby as a town was early to rise and, up with the sun, men with thick arms and sun-bleached skin carted beams of pale oak to and from the shipyards, all ready to be carved into the next _HMS Endeavour_. 1

Salt hung in the air like a thick fog that clung to the window panes and it flavoured the breath of every man, woman and child in the area. Childermass paid it all no mind. He was a young man with empty pockets, if he sighed over every hole in his socks or every drop of rain, he would arrive nowhere fast. He traipsed down Church Street with his chin pressed to his chest while his sharp eyes followed the ebb and flow of constant action the town seemed to provide.

He was looking for something. Something that had no name. Something that was closest to a feeling in reality, an unpleasant itch under his skin, and it was maybe that very lapse in concentration that then led to the worldly stutter in the corner of his eye.

The White Horse & Griffin was a popular coaching inn on Church Street. Only, several long strides later, there it was yet again, The White Horse carved onto a swinging sign. Childermass prided himself on his level of attentiveness in the past and to backtrack now was something of a personal slight, but he made an exception here and discovered a coat of arms depicting a white horse and a griffin emblazoned on two buildings, mere metres apart. The first building was newly painted and carried with it the smell of freshly baked gingerbread. The second was darker and had a smell that was just as spicy but decidedly more unwashed. No one else turned to stare at the hiccup in the landscape and Childermass entertained the idea that he had stumbled upon a natural illusion until his gaze fell on a gentleman outside of the less reputable building. He stood holding a cream coloured handkerchief over his nose and just like that, Childermass knew the truth. The gentleman’s expression spoke of pure misery, an unfortunate victim of crime.

This was no glamour spell then, only a different kind of moneymaking business.2

Distracted as he was, it would have been only too easy for Childermass to lift from the gentleman’s pockets but a cursory glance told him that it would not be worth the effort. Life had so far taught him not to harbour sentimentality, but it wasn’t pity that stayed his hand. Judging from the man’s fretting, his pockets were as empty as Childermass’ own. No, it was understanding that had him stepping around the gentleman and into The White Horse.

In his line of work, possessions fell in and out of his hands daily. Books were rare and books on magic far and few between, but stories, stories were tangled words that didn’t need to be written in ink. He had heard spoken tales of other worlds over bridges and under archways, subtly different in appearance until suddenly you found you were in too deep. With a dash of ego, he had always assumed he would know the difference but the moment John Childermass crossed the threshold of The White Horse the dull itch under his skin became a bone deep vibration, and the ethereal thing he was searching for moved tangibly closer.

The true oddness of his surroundings was simply commonplace. 

It was early in the work day and dull, featureless faces welcomed Childermass to The White Horse, a public house as it turned out. They looked his way yet saw nothing. There was an innate darkness about Childermass’ face; he had been reliably informed it aged him five or six years until he looked of un-noteworthy age. When those same blanketed faces turned away from him, back to their untouched drinks, impossible to drink without mouths, he thought nothing of it.

Likewise, the rustle under his boots was nothing strange. Only a bed of common ivy that stretched from the doorway, where he was currently standing, off on a winding path through the building. Childermass’ only thought before he put one foot in front of the other and followed was Dionysus would have been pleased.3

He was led to a table, nothing unusual there. Seated at the table was a slim man with long dark hair. To join him seemed entirely Childermass’ choice.

Reaching arms of ivy snapped loose as he pulled free the only other chair. They were quick to snake back up the legs once Childermass had made himself comfortable, even going so far as twisting around his ankles. A thoughtful gesture of keeping him grounded, he thought. Not that he needed it.

When the man spoke, it was with a lilting Northern accent proven to put Childermass completely at ease.

“Onward direction is not a principle in which you need instructing,” said the man, and he tilted his head, taking in all of Childermass with one long intrusive appraisal. “And the past is something best left behind. But the present, ah, the here and now is a stuck fast door to you.”

Childermass waited. It was not the first time a beggar or a vagrant had spoken cryptically about his person and it would certainly not be the last, but the man was too finely dressed just to be looking for a few coins in exchange for a fortune.

“I possess a key if you are interested,” the man went on to say and, sure enough, in the palm of his hand was a deck of pictured cards. They blurred indiscriminately as he shuffled them hand over hand. Childermass caught sight of a man in a wide brimmed hat and then it was gone again. With half a smile, the man hastened to add, “No charge, of course.”

That alone was enough to spark Childermass’ interest. From the moment he stepped onto Whitby stone and soil, money had been changing hands all around him, sometimes willingly, sometimes not. He had lost count of how many times he’d been offered a shiny piece of jet. Never mind that walking a mile along the shore would afford a man with more broken up pieces than he would know what to do with. Trading hard earned coins for a polished fragment on a string just didn’t appeal to Childermass’ sense of good business. A freely offered service, on the other hand, was something in which he could not turn up his nose.

He rattled his knuckles against the table top, not wanting to appear too eager, and sighed begrudgingly. “Spare me the past altogether and I’ll allow it. I have no desire to revisit my life.”

“A man of good sense, I see.” There was a pause, an absence of noise as whimsical as a chime of a bell, then, “or should I say boy.”

“Say what you like,” Childermass replied with a level tone. “Knowledge comes from experience and I have experienced more than most.”

“Oh aye, you have.”

The man then proceeded to lay down nine cards all in a row. He didn’t ask Childermass to hold the deck beforehand or even stare at the pile with conviction like he had seen other tellers do in the past and Childermass didn’t know enough to question whether this was a good sign or a bad one. All he knew was that the man’s familiarity with him had struck a chord.

The man’s oddly delicate fingers passed over the first few cards. They remained faced down on the table, staying true to Childermass’ wishes, but there was a glimmer in his eyes that gave the impression that he was reading the card backs instead.

The first card he turned over was the fourth card in the line. XVIII La Lune.

Childermass’ ability to read thoughts and feelings was far better than most, more honed considering the life he had led, but the deeper meaning of cards often eluded him. Not here though, here the image seemed to exude the very darkness of spirit it was trying to convey. Childermass shuddered as the man traced the inked lines making up a cray fish reaching up towards the moon.

Walking a narrow path between two dangers; this was his supposed present but, as much as he tried to deny it, he could feel those claws dragging deep into his past as well.

Next was XVI La Maison Dieu. Reversed.

Even with his rudimentary knowledge he knew reversed cards were considered unfortunate. A crumbling tower spoke for itself. In only two turns of the cards, his world had tumbled down around him and it became clear in that moment that he had fallen from that narrow path. Coldness spread through him as though he had been fully submerged in a barrelful of misery. With a tremble in his fingers, he reached for the next card on his own.

The 9 of Swords.

Sorrow hit him first. Loss and disillusionment came second and Childermass collapsed back in his chair feeling bone weary and tired.

The man looked on. An odd smile transformed his face from something smooth and statuesque into the very picture of madness. He held The 9 of Swords up between two fingers and began to rotate it, lazily flashing front and back. “Swords can sometimes be seen as a magical suit,” he offered, offhand, and Childermass half expected the swords to flicker to life and dance across the paper.

His eyes fell on the last group of three, still untouched. His future lay bare in front of him and Childermass let the moment hang in the air for a long time. Finally, he shook his head and the man swiftly gathered up the spread and tapped them in a tidy pile.

“You’re too right,” the man said. “The surprise is half the fun.”

Childermass felt the furthest thing from jovial. He was sagging under the heavy weight of his shoulders and he swore he could feel the creeping heat of several stares upon his back. He shifted in his seat and found his boots fastened to the floor and with the sensation of waking from a vivid dream Childermass began to grow restless.

Seeing this, the man’s smile faltered. A moment of indecision flashed across his face, hidden under it a look of almost proud fondness, before he reached over. Curling his fingers around Childermass’ covered wrist, he placed the deck in the flat of his palm. “Take them,” he said.

The cards sang in his hand, reminiscent of the itch under his skin that brought him here in the first place, what seemed like a lifetime again now. But there was a subtle disquiet about them. He wanted them, sure, but they did not belong to him. In the same way he was coming to realise he did not belong here either, wherever here was exactly.

It was with great effort that he refused and at once the man looked put out, surprised even.

“I cannot take a man’s livelihood from him without good reason,” Childermass explained, “but perhaps, time permitting, you would allow me to copy out my own with a reference.”

This proved agreeable and one by one Childermass sketched out Kings, Queens and Knights on the back of bills and letters pulled from seemingly never-ending pockets.

As he worked, the man filled the eerie silence with the story of how he came in possession of the cards himself. He painted a picture of Italy so expertly that the images washed themselves in front of Childermass’ eyes; it was as if he was truly there in person. He was a traveller insomuch that he rarely stopped moving but there was very little of the world he had actually seen. A Yorkshire man at heart, the sea port of Genoa was almost another world.

The longer the man spoke, the more his accent seemed to twist into something more lyrical, more pleasant. Gone was his lazy northern pronunciation, replaced by the tighter vowels of an Italian, and under the constant stream of words Childermass was dragged under.4

-

Sunlight blinded Childermass when he exited The White Horse. In one pocket sat the tangible weight of a bundle of papers. The half-finished drawings were stark behind his eyes, in no danger of being forgotten any time soon. The rough and ready sailor he had met was now just a memory, a tale of his own he could tell when someone asked how a man of such good sense as he came in possession of something so disrespectful.

In the other pocket, his hand curiously found a length of string. When he drew it out, he discovered a jagged fragment of jet on the end of it, deep black in colour. It wasn’t until he held it up to the sun that the sharps edges and lines came together to form a bird in flight.

-

Decades later, ensconced behind a yellow curtain, Childermass had moved on.

The unsure footing around the tower was now his past and his employment with Mr Norrell his enterprising present, finally revealed. He stared down at the rest of the spread impassively, with the feeling that life was repeating, not at all goaded by Vinculus’ good humour.

The tale of the sailor drowned at sea had rolled off his tongue so easily there was no reason for anyone to doubt it.

When Vinculus then flitted away leaving him with a deck of Emperors stained with the mark of the Raven King, his hands itched from the familiar tell of magic once again.

-

-

-

-

-

-

1 The famous ship commanded by Captain James Cook started its life in a Whitby shipyard. Originally built in 1764 by Tomas Fishburn as a coal carrier named _Earl of Pembroke_ , it was bought and refitted by the Royal Navy in 1768. The pride and prestige was still felt by the townsfolk to this day. Though any mention of how the ship later came to rest often resulted in a sneer and a gob of spit aimed towards your shoes. Its final christened name, _Lord Sandwich_ , was altogether best considered left forgotten as well.

2 Thievery had not come to Whitby on the coattails of John Childermass. Despite what he might think at such a young age. Criminals had long since made a home at The White Horse, intercepting the coach deposits from gentlemen that were meant to go on to The White Horse & Griffin. When lawyers were called these gentlemen would then find themselves twice out of pocket and twice as confounded as the lawyers were more often than not in on the scam.

3 Common ivy was traditionally used to pave the way for English magicians as a way of celebration. Childermass was yet to procure a book that detailed this. He would not until years later which, by then, the knowledge would be of little use to him.

4 Among the Romance languages, Italian is the closest to Latin in terms of vocabulary.


End file.
